


Picking Up The Pieces (And Moving On)

by Telaryn



Series: Second Chances [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Betrayal, Boys In Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Roller Coaster, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e11 The Magical Place, Hurt/Comfort, Lies, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Nick Fury Lies, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovered Memories, Repressed Memories, Secrets, Tahiti is a Magical Place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How the aftermath of "A Magical Place" would have played out if Clint and Natasha had been in on the hunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picking Up The Pieces (And Moving On)

**Author's Note:**

> There is a WIP that goes in front of this segment - now that I have a little breathing room I'm heading straight back there to finish it up.

_He’s alive. We found him._

Clint dimly heard Natasha swear in Russian as he bailed out of the car before she’d even come to a complete stop. He didn’t care; the only thing that mattered – that had mattered since they’d gotten Skye’s call – was that he get inside, get to Coulson… _see for myself._

 _”I can’t lose him again Nat – I won’t survive it.”_ It was a truth he now understood as well as anything in his life. He didn’t understand why they’d been given a second chance to explore their feelings for each other, but Clint knew the odds of them getting a third well enough not to want to risk what they had right here and now.

Natasha caught up with him inside the bus, just in time to keep him from charging up the spiral staircase to where Coulson stood. “Don’t,” she hissed, pulling him back against her. “Whatever you’re feeling, don’t take his moment.”

He’d started to throw her off and damn the consequences, but their eyes met and he forced himself to relax. No matter how frantic he was to see for himself, to touch and reassure himself that Coulson was alive and safe, he knew deep down that Phil wouldn’t appreciate the emotional display. Not now, not in front of his people, when he needed to show them and SHIELD that he was still fit.

Phil was calmly settling his cuffs when Clint could finally trust himself to turn and join the crowd looking up at the catwalk. Their eyes met and Clint’s vision blurred briefly as he saw the swirl of emotions in Coulson’s eyes. _You’re here. You’re alive._ Everything else they could deal with in turn.

A soft whisper of Russian reached his ears. “There is something fragile about him.” Natasha had come up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist in an uncharacteristically public display of physical affection. Clint leaned back into her, drawing strength and balance from the contact as he always did in times of stress. _”You’re using arguably the most dangerous woman in the world as your actual security blanket – you know that, right?”_ had been Tony’s assessment of the quirk.

“We’ll keep him together,” he whispered back to her, also in Russian. “Whatever he needs, right?”

A quick press of lips against the back of his neck was all he needed to know that Natasha had his back no matter where this was going to take them.  
************************************  
“Are you going to stay with him?” The speeches were done and Coulson was slowly making his way downstairs and through the sea of SHIELD agents and higher-ups that had wanted to see for themselves that the Assistant Director was all right.

Skye had spoken so softly Clint had almost missed the question. “That’s the plan,” he acknowledged, “but I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.”

Natasha loosened her grip on him, shifting so that they were standing side by side. “You were the one who found him?” she asked.

Whatever she’d seen had been horrible; Clint didn’t have any doubts about that. _She’s inexperienced,_ he reminded himself before his imagination could run away with him completely. Her bar for ‘horrible’ was different than his, just as his was different from Coulson’s.

She nodded though, in response to Nat’s question. “Me and…Agent May.” She shivered, half in memory. “He was begging to die, Clint. Whatever they were showing him, he kept begging to die.”

Swallowing hard, he forced himself to smile reassuringly. “Whatever happened, Nat and I will make sure he’s all right.” Reaching out, he gripped the girl’s arm. “Thank you for keeping us in the loop and not giving up. He’s going to be all right.”

“Who is?”

Coulson had slipped up on them while they were talking. Clint felt his posture straighten automatically in response to Phil’s demeanor. “Agent Barton, Agent Romanoff, please wait for me outside. I need to talk to Skye alone for a second.” A hint of a smile showed as each of them nodded without a moment’s hesitation.

“Daddy’s in the mood to start some shit,” Natasha muttered as they headed down the ramp together. Clint glanced at his partner – as expected, the redhead’s grin was wide and feral.

“Gonna be a party,” he agreed, his smile matching her own.  
*******************  
After he said his thanks to the team, Coulson started down the ramp after Barton and Romanoff. He paused at the base, turning to see that the one set of footsteps that followed him was Melinda’s. “You’re not well enough to be going off like this,” she said calmly. “Whatever it is, it can wait until you’re stronger.”

She’d been there with Skye. She’d seen his condition, and he wouldn’t be able to brush her off with a few casual comments about how it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. “Actually it can’t,” he admitted.

It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but despite what the younger ones thought of her Melinda was brilliant at rolling with the punches. “Then I’ll come with you.”

Coulson was touched by her determination, but if Fury was already taking extraordinary measures to protect the secret of what he’d done to restore Coulson to life. Phil knew he couldn’t risk somebody like Melinda running afoul of the director’s temper once they were discovered. _And we will be discovered._ “Barton and Romanoff are waiting for me,” he said. “I’m not getting into anything they won’t be able to get me out of – I swear.” He exhaled softly. “I need you here, Melinda. I need you and Ward to keep the team together so I have something to come back to.”

She still wasn’t happy, but Coulson knew he’d found the right chord to strike; when he turned to continue into the darkness, she didn’t follow him.

As he drew further away from the bus, awareness of the time constraints he was under pressed in on him. Doctor Streiten had to be his target. Fury already had his best people working on Raina. “As soon as he knows what they’re after he’ll put Streiten somewhere I’ll never find him.”

“Doctor Streiten?”

Coulson looked up to see Clint and Natasha standing by Nat’s car, waiting for him just as he’d asked. The sight warmed him – no matter how far off the rails the next few hours went, he could trust these two to move heaven and earth to see him home. “I need you to find him for me, Natasha,” he said, eschewing rank and title in order to emphasize to both of them how what they were about to do was most assuredly _not_ sanctioned.

Without missing a beat, the red-haired assassin flipped her keys to Clint and pulled out her smart phone. “Sending home address,” she said as the three of them took their seats in the car. Clint flipped on the GPS monitor. “That’s an hour from here depending on how many laws I break,” he said, firing up the engine and throwing the car into gear. “Are we sure he’s home?”

“We’ll refine as we go,” Coulson said, cutting short any debate as he buckled himself in. “Time is _not_ on our side.”

It wasn’t until they were on the highway that Coulson realized how much he’d missed working with Clint and Natasha. The framework was familiar, comfortable – he could trust that each of them would do what needed to be done, and he would only be questioned if it was necessary. That wasn’t to say that they didn’t have questions or that he didn’t owe them – particularly Clint – the best answers he could provide, but they understood that the time for questions was not now.

They’d been on the road a little over half an hour when Natasha reported, “SHIELD Medical just put Streiten on call for the next twenty-four hours. Priority one.”

Coulson met her gaze in the rear view mirror. “Has he been called in, or is it just a notification?”

“Just a notification for now, but it does tell us that he’s at home and likely to stay there until Director Fury calls.”

“And the goal is to get to him before Fury does,” Clint said. Coulson glared at him, but Barton shrugged. “Just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page and this _is_ Nick Fury and the entirety of SHIELD’s resources we’re taking on.”

“I have a right to know what they did to bring me back,” Coulson said quietly. “And why Centipede is so keen to find out about it. Streiten was there, and whatever was going on he clearly didn’t approve.”

Clint held up a hand. “Nobody’s saying you don’t deserve to know, boss. And if you think Doc Streiten’s got your answers, Nat and I will make sure he gives you everything he has.” He glanced quickly in the rearview mirror, but whatever Nat’s expression told him it was exactly what he’d expected.

“We’re not necessarily thrilled with Director Fury’s priorities in this matter either,” Natasha said.

Coulson felt his heart skip a beat. “Whatever happens, whatever we find out, I don’t want either of you looking for revenge on my behalf.” He looked between the two of them. “Promise me.”

Clint was suddenly stone-faced, his attention entirely on the road. “You aren’t the only one his lies have hurt, Phil,” Natasha said softly. Coulson shifted in his seat so he could see her clearly, and the sorrow in her expression rocked him to his core. “I will promise you that if Clint and I pursue our grievances with Director Fury it will be on our own behalves.” After a beat of silence, her focus shifted to Clint. “Clint?”

“No.”

There was something in his voice that cut Phil to his soul. Overcome, he started to reach out but stopped himself. They couldn’t give into emotion yet. Somewhere buried deep beneath all of his focused determination was the meltdown he was entitled to have after everything he’d been through, and if he gave into it now he was never going to get the answers he needed.

“Clint,” he said finally.

The archer shook his head, the movement too sharp, too tight. “There is nothing I will deny you, Phil, not now, not ever. Don’t ask me to promise this until I know what it is I’m promising.”

It was sobering – the awareness that it would actually be harder for Clint to refrain from killing on Coulson’s behalf than it would be for Phil to just turn him loose. Before he could even begin to figure out how he was supposed to respond to that, Natasha spoke up again. “Enough philosophical debate boys – call’s coming in.”

“How close are we to intercept?” Phil asked. Even in the dim light he could see the muscles along Clint’ jaw tighten.

“We’ll make it,” he promised, and they heard the car’s engine growl in response to a boot pushing the drive pedal all the way to the floor.  
***************************  
When it was over, the thought uppermost in Clint’s mind was that Streiten’s story should have taken longer to tell. True they’d been under a time constraint, but something so huge – so _monstrous_ \- deserved a more imposing backdrop than the three of them crowded into Streiten’s car conversing in hushed and hurried whispers with the doctor. Clint and Natasha hadn’t even needed their weapons; Streiten’s guilty conscience had been more than enough for the doctor to willingly tell them everything he knew.

The problem was that what he knew wasn’t much. _”I was brought in after the seventh operation,”_ he’d admitted, and the news that there had even been that many had been enough to chill Clint all the way to his soul. In fact, he was pretty sure his brain had stopped working somewhere between the revelation that Coulson had been dead for _days_ and the lengths Fury had been willing to go to make certain he didn’t stay that way.

As bad as the telling was for he and Natasha, Streiten’s story was unlocking actual _memories_ in Coulson, and one quick glance at his lover was all Clint needed to convince himself that they were only scratching the surface of what had happened. Phil was shaking by the time Streiten was winding down – badly enough that he fumbled opening the door before staggering out of the car. “Go,” Nat told him with a quick jerk of her head. “The doctor and I have a few things to get straight.”

It was all the encouragement Clint needed. Coulson had stopped moving about halfway to where they had left Nat’s car. “Phil,” he said softly, putting his hands on Coulson’s shoulders.

It was the wrong thing to do. Coulson flinched violently away from his touch, raising his hands immediately in a warding off gesture. “Don’t,” he said, and there was definitely something fragile in his voice this time. “Not now Clint – please. I can’t take it.”

The rejection stung for a fraction of a second, but Clint swallowed it down. _If there was ever a moment that qualified as ‘not about you, Barton’,_ he thought, moving around until he could catch Phil’s attention. “What do you need, boss?” he asked gently. “Anything you need – just tell me and I’ll make it happen.”

“Take me home.”  
***********************  
“It’s probably for the best,” Natasha agreed when she finally joined them at the car. “I suspect he was still hoping there would be a rational explanation for everything.”

Clint snorted. “Rational left this conversation hours ago. What did Streiten tell you?”

Nat sighed. “Enough to give me an idea where to start looking for the rest of it.” Off Clint’s startled look, she shook her head. “He’s done for tonight. I’m not saying we should take him anywhere but home.”

“I don’t think he should be alone Nat,” Clint offered. Smiling wistfully, the red-head reached out and quickly caressed his cheek.

“You are the medicine he needs most right now, _dorogaya moya,_ ” she said. “I need to hunt, but I give you my word I will restrict myself to the gathering of information only. No flesh and blood targets until Coulson is well enough to give the word.”

It was the best he was going to get under the circumstances, but Clint was still overwhelmed enough that he had to ask. “He looks like he’s about a hair’s breadth from imploding Nat – are you sure you shouldn’t stay with us?”

“It’s easier throwing yourself off an exploding building, isn’t it?” she asked, reaching out and smoothing a few errant strands of his hair. Feeling his cheeks flame hot, Clint ducked his head and nodded. “You can do this,” she said, stepping in and kissing him on the cheek. “Better than anyone else I know.”

Unfortunately the drive home did nothing to bolster the confidence Nat’s words had instilled in him. Clint had dutifully yielded the wheel to Natasha, half-hoping Coulson would join him in the back seat, but Phil had resumed his place up front as though it were a foregone conclusion. As the miles crawled past, Clint watched as long as he could for even a hint of an opening. The longer he watched, the further Coulson appeared to be pulling in on himself.

 _Don’t leave me,_ was the last thought Clint had before the fact he hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours finally caught up with him.  
****************************  
“Take him home.” It wasn’t even in the neighborhood of what he wanted, but Coulson could feel the rage he’d been holding at bay for far too long finally clawing its way up towards the surface. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

Natasha sighed softly in the stillness. They were in his driveway at last, and she’d shut the engine off – letting the darkness close in around the three of them. “He knows. He can do this for you.” She turned to face him, hitching one leg up on the expensive leather seat. “He’s entitled Phil, don’t shut him out.”

 _This is what it means to have someone in your life, someone who matters._ Turning, Coulson studied the archer sleeping in the back seat. As long as he’d known him, Barton had always looked a good ten years younger when he was sleeping. “Clint,” he said, his voice catching on the name. Reaching out, he shook the bare, muscled arm.

Clint came awake with a gasp – Coulson pulled back just in time to keep from being mistaken for an assailant. “We’re here,” he said.

Storm-grey eyes met his in the dim light. “I’m not leaving.”

Smiling ruefully, Coulson only barely stopped himself from reaching out and touching his lover again. “I know.” Turning back to Natasha, he nodded his thanks before slipping from the car.

 _Days. I was dead for days._ He lived in a world where they dealt with the impossible on a daily – practically an hourly – basis. Even if he were willing to accept that Streiten had been telling the truth as he understood it, literally nothing in Coulson’s experience could help him get from that fact to this moment.

 _What did you do?_ An image of Director Fury standing over him flashed into his thoughts. Nick had been present nearly the entire time – now that he knew what to look for, Coulson could remember the sound of raised voices arguing; one of them belonging to his old ‘friend’.

 _”Failure is not an option, dammit!”_ Coulson shuddered violently, almost as if he were hearing the words right next to his ear for the first time. The stronger the memories got, the more tightly his body’s memory of the pain was pressing. It hadn’t stopped. Even the times he’d been under entirely had given him no relief – the nature of the anesthetic meant that he was left with no lost time, just a series of wavering jump cuts like badly strung together scenes in a horror movie. 

_”This man will not die. I don’t care what it takes.”_ Phil scrubbed a hand absent-mindedly across his chest as he finally stumbled over the threshold into his home. The scar seemed to ache more frequently these days, although Coulson hadn’t dismissed the idea that he was creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by focusing more lately on the disfiguring mark and what it meant. _You didn’t give me a choice._ They’d always called him a “Company Man”; the one man _in_ the entirety of SHIELD he would have assumed would never betray him had taken that loyalty and used it to drag him through hell.

 _”Please, just let me die…”_ The screaming, the sobbing, all of the embarrassing, agonizing things his body had been forced through were nothing compared to the pathetic begging _thing_ it had all reduced him to. The begging had been real, dragged up from the depths of his soul, and his _friend_ hadn’t even had the decency to acknowledge his pleas.

The rage and grief he’d been holding at bay for too long burst free at last, and this time Coulson didn’t even try to stop it.  
****************************************  
The air between them seemed to thicken with every step Coulson took into the sanctuary of his home. Clint retained enough presence of mind to lock the door again, but aside from that he had no idea what was happening, what he was supposed to be doing, or if Phil even remembered he was there.

 _“Trust yourself.”_ It was all Nat had said, touching him briefly on the arm as he’d been moving to follow Coulson out of the car. He supposed as motivational speeches went it was good enough, but right now he would have traded all the motivation in the world for a clue as to how to not make the story unfolding in front of his eyes worse. Phil was talking to himself, not loud enough to be heard, but clearly sinking deeper and deeper into whatever memories the conversation with Dr. Streiten had set in motion.

Every so often a part of his body would twitch or convulse, almost of its own volition. _PTSD_ Clint thought as they entered the kitchen. As his brain was recovering memories, occasionally it would spark a physical response in whatever part of Phil’s body had been involved in creating the memory in the first place.

His mouth was actually open to speak, to say anything to draw Coulson out of his head – or at the very least suggest they go someplace away from the assortment of very sharp and very hot implements that were currently at hand – but flinched instead, his hands clenching reflexively into fists as Coulson finally screamed.

In the exact amount of time it took Clint to blink, Coulson had swept everything off the butcher block table in a single, violent motion. “ _You had no right you son of a bitch!_ ” He staggered, then recovered himself as Clint started forward, waving the archer back with a shaking hand. “No. Stay back.” His chest and shoulders were heaving suddenly with each ragged breath he took, and there was something decidedly off-balance in his eyes. “I can’t do this. I can’t pretend that I don’t know what I know.”

“So don’t,” Clint said, his own voice full of all the tears he couldn’t risk shedding. _Not right now._ All self-doubt was gone. Phil needed him to be strong and he wasn’t going to fail. _Not this time._ “Talk to me Phil, please. Tell me what you need; anything you need and it’s yours I swear.”

“Days,” Phil said, and the word was little more than a sob. “Not seconds, not like they said. _Days_ , Clint, and I still don’t know why Fury did it?” He slammed his fists against the heavy wood. “It hurt. God it hurt so much.” He hung his head. “I wanted to die. I begged them to let me die.” Another strangled scream clawed its way out of Coulson’s chest as he buried his face in his hands.

Clint took the moment and _moved_ \- closing the distance that separated them in three quick strides. Coulson started to pull away as he felt Clint’s hands on him, but it was too late. The archer wrapped him up in the tightest embrace he could, and the last fragile threads of Coulson’s control shredded and drifted away. “Why?” he sobbed, clutching at Clint now for support. “Why would he put me through that? Why wouldn’t he just let me die?”

The sounds he was making cut straight through Barton, more painful than any bullet or knife would he’d ever endured, and there was nothing he could say – nothing he could offer with words by way of comfort.

 _Because he wasn’t sorry._ They still didn’t know precisely what Coulson had endured, but no matter how horrible it had been standing here in the middle of Coulson’s kitchen and holding the man he loved in his arms…Clint suddenly knew he couldn’t be sorry for anything that had made that possible. None of which was actually useful right now, but he couldn’t help the way he was feeling.

“Let’s get you upstairs,” he murmured as Coulson’s sobs finally began to taper off. _”Trust yourself,”_ Nat had said, and he suddenly knew that meant he was going to have to take the lead tonight. If he was going to be here and do right by Phil, he needed to be the one calling the shots for a change.

Almost as if he’d been listening to Clint’s internal scramble – and for all Barton knew he had – Coulson tensed. “You don’t have to stay,” he said, meeting Clint’s eyes. “Seriously Clint…I’m not in a good place right now. Nobody would blame you if you got the hell away from me tonight; probably say you were doing the smart thing.”

Clint didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that. Instead he settled for reaching up and brushing Coulson’s hair back off his forehead. “I’m going to get a hot bath going, something to relax you. Then I’m going to raid your cupboards, because I’m betting you don’t even know when you ate last.”

Phil’s eyes flushed red, but before the tears could start flowing again, he dashed them away with the back of his hand. “Call Damiano’s,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. Reaching into his back pocket, he took out his wallet and handed it to Clint. “Give them my name and order two of my usual. Have the driver knock on the back door and leave it.”

“You sure about leaving it?” Clint asked, flipping open the worn leather and pulling out the card he knew Coulson preferred to use for personal things.

The question prompted a smile from Coulson. “Delivery will take about an hour. If we’re not done by then you can borrow a robe.” Just as quickly as it had bloomed, the smile faded. “Thank you,” he said, his voice trembling. “I’m not good at saying it, but this is one time I’m glad you’re not listening to me.”

Overcome with emotion, Clint leaned in and kissed Coulson as thoroughly as he dared. After a beat he felt a hand hook the back of his neck, fingers flexing possessively against his skin. “Don’t take too long,” Coulson breathed, when Clint finally let him up for air.

“No longer than I have to,” Clint promised, willing the man in his arms to understand just how much he meant it. “Not one second longer than I have to.”


End file.
